1 Overview of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

This chapter provides an overview of Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control (Enterprise Manager Cloud Control) and helps you understand its architecture and the various core components that are integrated within the product.

Overview of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control is system management software that delivers centralized monitoring, administration, and life cycle management functionality for the complete IT infrastructure, including systems running Oracle and non-Oracle technologies.

Your environment may comprise multiple Oracle Databases, Oracle WebLogic Servers, Web applications deployed on these servers, hosts running these targets, and so on. You can, of course, use the individual product consoles to monitor the status of each of these targets, but it becomes cumbersome to shuttle between multiple console windows and track the performance of each of these targets using so many windows.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control offers a solution that allows you to monitor and manage the complete Oracle IT infrastructure from a single console. In addition, it provides support for business-driven IT management and business-centric top-down application management to manage your business services, user experience, and infrastructure. It also offers support for monitoring certain non-Oracle products, for example, IBM WebSphere Application Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Juniper Networks NetScreen Firewall, and so on.

Note:

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control does not require a private or public cloud.

Figure 1-2 shows a sample Enterprise Manager Cloud Control architecture and illustrates how these core components fit into the architecture.

Figure 1-2 Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Architecture

Note:

In Figure 1-2, the load balancer and the multiple OMSes are depicted only to indicate how a sample Enterprise Manager Cloud Control architecture would look in a large organization. They are not a prerequisite or a requirement for an Enterprise Manager system installation. If you do not have a load balancer, then the Management Agents communicate directly with the OMSes.

The following sections describe the core components of Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

Oracle Management Agent (Management Agent)

The Management Agent is an integral software component that enables you to convert an unmanaged host to a managed host in the Enterprise Manager system. The Management Agent works in conjunction with the plug-ins to monitor the targets running on that managed host.

Oracle Management Service (OMS)

The OMS is a Web-based application that orchestrates with the Management Agents and the Oracle Management Plug-Ins to discover targets, monitor and manage them, and store the collected information in a repository for future reference and analysis. The OMS also renders the user interface for Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. The OMS is deployed to the Oracle Middleware Home (middleware home), which is the parent directory that has the Oracle WebLogic Server home, the OMS home, the Management Agent home, the plug-in home, the Java Development Kit (JDK), the OMS instance base directory, the Oracle WT directory, the Oracle Common directory, and other relevant configuration files and directories. While deploying the OMS, the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Installation Wizard installs Oracle WebLogic Server if it does not already exist in your environment. As a result, a WebLogic Server admin console is also installed.

Oracle Management Repository (Management Repository)

The Management Repository is a storage location where all the information collected by the Management Agent gets stored. It consists of objects such as database jobs, packages, procedures, views, and tablespaces.

The OMS uploads the monitoring data it receives from the Management Agents to the Management Repository. The Management Repository then organizes the data so that it can be retrieved by the OMS and displayed in the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control console. Since data is stored in the Management Repository, it can be shared between any number of administrators accessing the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control.

At the time of installation, the Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Installation Wizard configures the Management Repository in your existing, certified database. The wizard, however, does not install a new database.

Oracle Management Plug-Ins (Plug-Ins)

Plug-Ins are pluggable entities that offer special management capabilities customized to suit specific target types. Unlike the earlier releases of Enterprise Manager, in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, the plug-ins work in conjunction with the OMS and the Management Agent to monitor every target in your environment. Therefore, they are deployed to the OMS as well as the Management Agent. In the earlier releases, plug-ins enabled you to monitor only third-party targets, but in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, plug-ins enable you to monitor all types of targets in your environment.

Plug-ins have independent release cycles, so every time you have a new version of an Oracle product released, you will have a new version of the plug-in released to support monitoring of that new product version in Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. This simplifies things because you no longer have to wait to upgrade your Enterprise Manager system to support a new product version; instead you can upgrade your plug-ins to monitor the new product version.

Table 1-1 lists the mandatory plug-ins that are installed by default with a new Enterprise Manager system. In addition to these mandatory plug-ins, you can optionally install other plug-ins available in the software kit (DVD, downloaded software bundle, and so on). The installer offers a screen where you can select the optional plug-ins and install them.

Enables you to log in to My Oracle Support from within the Cloud Control console, search the knowledge library for notes and documents, raise service requests, and create patch plans and templates for patching monitored targets.

Oracle Exadata

Enables you to monitor and manage Oracle Exadata targets.

Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Console

The Enterprise Manager Cloud Control console is the user interface you see after you install Enterprise Manager Cloud Control. With the help of the console, you can monitor and administer your entire computing environment from one location on the network. All the systems and services including enterprise application systems, databases, hosts, middleware application servers, listeners, and so on, are easily managed from one central location.